Smarter Than You Think Flashcards
Put interesting and/or complex words from "Smarter Than You Think" in this deck!
savant: “In reality, the automaton was controlled by a chess savant cunningly tucked inside the wooden cabinet” (pg 443)
someone with a high level of knowledge or skill
immutable: “Now, none of these three digital bases is immutable, because they’re the product of software and hardware, and can easily be altered or ended” (pg 451)
not capable of change
redolent: “I’ve lost two hours of work, a missing-time experience redolent of a UFO abduction” (pg 452)
strongly reminiscent or suggestive of something
florilegia: “Scholars quickly set about organizing the new mental environment by clipping their favorite passages from books and assembling them into huge tomes - florilegia, bouquets of text - so that readers could sample the best parts” (pg 454)
a collection of excerpts from written texts
Sargasso
A large mass
Ubiquitous
present, appearing, or found everywhere
Superfluity
an unnecessarily or excessively large amount or number of something
nuanced
characterized by subtle shades of meaning or expression
Dogma (pg 469)
a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.
Quintessential (pg 441)
“It’s the quintessential cognitive activity, logic as an extreme sport.”
representing the most perfect or typical example of a quality or class.
Juxtapositions (449)
“These resources enable us to pursue manipulations and juxtapositions of ideas and data that would quickly baffle the unaugmented brain,”
the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect
Prodigious (450)
“First, they allow for prodigious external memory: smartphones, hard drives, cameras, and sensors routinely record more information than any tool before them.”
remarkably or impressively great in extent, size. or degree